


a study in survival

by windfalling



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 04:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfalling/pseuds/windfalling
Summary: Liz sees it so clearly, the way that he dies.In which Liz has visions of a man she doesn't remember. [Push (2009)!AU]





	a study in survival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thenopetrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenopetrain/gifts).



> Hi! So I kind of went for the angst and AU part of your prompt and was going for an AU of the film Push (2009) but this… turned out to be more or less a S1 canon-divergent AU feat. the occasional psychic power. Oops?
> 
> Anyway, this fic follows the events of the pilot and parallels certain events from the show + movie to some degree. Tom is in this, but mostly in a villain/antagonist role as in S1, so all warnings associated with that apply. For the most part, though, his presence in this fic is more secondary to the reaction/effects he's had on Liz, and only appears in a significant role in two scenes in the latter half.
> 
> I've also included a quick glossary of the terms used at the end.
> 
> Even though this kind of got out of hand, I hope you enjoy it!

**I.**

 

Liz sees it so clearly, the way that he dies.

He’s standing in a warehouse, hands up _._ There’s a gun pointed at him, and her hands are wrapped it, her finger is on the trigger. He’s saying her name, a look of raw desperation on his face, and it is the last thing he ever says before she shoots him in the chest.

 

 

She wakes up to her husband shaking her shoulder.

“I’m fine,” she says, and when her voice breaks, she realises that she’s crying. “It’s just a nightmare.”

It isn’t the first time she’s seen that man in her visions. The night before, she had watched him kneel in the centre of a circle. She’s heard that voice only once outside her dreams, in a call to her personal cell phone a few months ago. _A stupid prank_ , Tom had said, and offered to block the number for her. She’d been strangely reluctant, but agreed to it in the end.

The man on the phone had only said one word.

_“Lizzy?”_

 

 

Liz watches her vision come to life in the footage of a man surrendering to the FBI.

A notorious criminal, the Assistant Director had told her, by the name of Raymond Reddington. He’s a powerful shifter—powerful enough to create them chasing after illusions of him for days, or shift the appearance of entire buildings.

Liz doesn’t know who he is. She hadn’t lied to Cooper about that. But she has seen him before.

“Agent Keen, what a pleasure.”

The man from her vision sits before her. He smiles and the image rises in her thoughts before she can quash it: her hands, the gun, the blood.

“Well,” she says, her voice as even as she can make it. “I’m here.”

Reddington gets this curious look on his face the more she asks about Zamani, but it disappears into that smile of his. The Baltimore comment is supposed to throw her off, she knows, but she continues to press about Zamani. He tells her about the kidnapping plot. Then he says, eyes sharp, “You don’t have to believe me. You only have to look for yourself and see.”

Her body goes cold.

 

 

Reddington knows things about her that he shouldn’t.

Baltimore is one thing. Her mother and father are another—something that Assistant Director Cooper and Ressler had caught. Neither of them questioned the one statement that has been replaying like a broken record in the back of her mind.

Liz goes back and forth between _he knows he knows he knows_ and _that wasn’t what he meant_ a thousand times in the next few hours, and when he doesn’t mention anything like it again between Beth’s failed extraction and finding the chemist, she settles on the latter.

Then she comes home and finds Tom.

 

 

When she stabs the pen into Reddington’s neck and feels his blood trickling over her fingers, she wonders if this is how she ends up killing him. She wonders if, in a different timeline, her husband dies and she faces him with a gun instead of a pen.

She had not thought twice before doing it. _Zamani did you a favour, Lizzy_ , he had said, and the rage had guided her hand to the nearest weapon she saw.

But the moment she turns on her heel and walks out the door, there’s an terrible feeling in her chest, more painful than anything she’s experienced before. She stumbles in her step, and an awful sound escapes from her mouth, and when she touches her cheek, her fingers come away wet. It is Zamani stabbing her husband all over again, except it isn’t her husband, it isn’t Zamani, but it’s her, it’s her knife and her hands and the wrong man.

_Turn back._

She keeps moving forward.

 

 

The Chemist isn’t talking, and she needs to find Zamani and the girl.

This is what she tells herself when she goes to see Reddington in the hospital. It is mostly true, anyway. There is no part of her that wants physical proof that he’s okay, because that would be illogical, given the angry phone call from Cooper the night before and the vision she had minutes before that.

She had seen Reddington in the hospital, awake, frowning down at his tray of hospital food. His hands behind his head, standing before her as Ressler and the rest of the team approach. In a hotel room, showing her something written on small pieces of paper. In the back of a car, turning a folded bill into a mirror, and then a desert rose.

When she enters his room, she pulls up short. There’s an entirely different person lying on the bed.

“He’s gone,” she says to Ressler, and the look on his face when he sees a stranger in the room might have been funny in any other situation.

“Fucking shifters,” he growls.

 

 

“You know what I don’t understand,” Reddington says in the few seconds before the FBI surrounds them in the zoo, hands already moving to the back of his head.

“What?” Her eyes are on Beth, running toward her father.

He gives her a contemplative look, as if she were a puzzle he had all the time in the world to solve. “You could’ve cut this chase in half. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that you weren’t a watcher.”

She was wrong.

 

 

Reddington looks up at her from where he’s seated. Even chained up as he is, his presence inhabits the small cell he’s in. She has a feeling that he could walk into a crowded room and every inch of it would belong to him with a single step, as easy as breathing.

Liz stays on her feet. “I found fake passports. Money. A gun.” She paces for all of three steps before it becomes clear that there’s no room to move.

“And?”

“Did you put them there?”

“No.”

They stare each other down. “I don’t believe you,” she finally says.

He merely tilts his head. “What have you seen?”

She flinches, the fear instinctive. When he sees this, he says, gentler than before, “I understand the need for discretion. But before I can help you, I need to know what you’ve seen.”

“You,” she says. “Just you.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Anything specific? What about your husband?”

“I saw you in the hospital, after I… after. And then I saw you showing me these letters or notes or something I wrote.” She doesn’t mention the rose, or the part where she points a gun at him. “I can’t control them. They mostly come when I’m sleeping.”

He goes quiet. When he speaks again, his voice is carefully even. “You can’t control them?”

“No. I was better at it when I was younger. I don’t remember when things changed.”

Reddington searches her face for a long moment, but whatever he finds seems to disappoint him.

The guard comes to the door of the cell. “Time’s up.”

“Wait.”

Liz freezes as he presses something into her hand. She doesn’t dare look back at him. The guard frowns at her impatiently, but gives no indication that he’s seen Reddington move at all.

He speaks quietly near her ear, barely a whisper. She still doesn’t turn around.

“Try to remember, Lizzy.”

 

 

The note is in her handwriting, and it reads:

 

 

_R—  
_ _If I forget:  
_ _9023_

 

 

**II.**

 

Reddington strikes a deal, the task force gains a new mission, and she plays the role of agent and liaison between them. Part of his deal involves fewer black sites and the addition of two bodyguards: a mover and a shadow. Neither of them had look surprised to see her. The mover, Dembe, inclines his head in greeting, but the shadow, Luli, smiles at her and says, “It’s nice to see you again under less awkward circumstances.”

Liz looks over at Reddington, who merely clasps his hands together and avoids her gaze. “Shall we move inside?”

 

 

At her husband’s bedside, she reads the note, tracing the faded letters. She knows by now that it’s real, no matter how much she wants to deny it.

There are pictures of their wedding and of their honeymoon and she remembers that. They had taken a trip for a week a year ago, and she remembers that, too. But there aren’t pictures of the fight they’d had three months ago, when they’d argued about the idea of having children and of her career. Or the other little fights peppered over the past year, and all the moments they’d made up for them, too. Where does her memory stop and begin again?

She’d never told him about her visions. The years spent hiding from Division with her father had taught her better than that. Now, though, she wonders if they have found her after all.

  

 

 

 

 

 

_R—_  
_Have new information contact me asap!!!  
_ _PS. you need a better lock_

 

_R—_  
_It’s safe. You’ll have it once you’ve fulfilled your end of our agreement.  
_ _PS. I didn’t realize you had someone over. I’ll call next time._

 

_R—_  
_DO NOT ATTEND THAT AUCTION TOMORROW YOU WILL DIE  
_ _CALL ME BACK_

 

_R—_  
_He wants to adopt a child. A CHILD. I don’t know how long I can keep this up.  
_ _PS. I am not jealous. I was just a little surprised, that’s all._

 

_R—  
_ _Going dark don’t call me he knows something  
_ _I’ll contact you when I can_

 

She does not speak for a long time.

“I’m so sorry, Lizzy,” Reddington says quietly. They’re in his hotel suite, part of the deal he struck with the FBI. He’s sitting on the opposite end of the couch, but his arm rests between them, stretched out toward her.

“Is he Division?”

“Yes.”

“Wiper?”

“No. He hired someone else for that.” He pauses. “It’s very likely that he’s a pusher. Especially given the role he’s played in your life.”

She laughs, and it is an abrupt, harsh sound. “And what is that? Fake husband? Monitor? Why not just drag me back to Division, why play this—this game with my _life?_ ”

There have always been whispers about an organisation that hunts psychics down, about people who go missing every day. The government agency is a myth to the general public, but her people know the truth.

Reddington takes the first note he gave her, gesturing at the number she’d apparently written. “You have the answers, Lizzy.”

 

 

He lets her keep the notes.

She’s read them over and over since then. Something she’d failed to notice the first time is that they’re all crinkled and worn, as if he’d done the same.

It isn’t difficult to make the connection between two of them. _I didn’t realize you had someone over_ , and then _I am not jealous_ implies something she was not quite expecting. She thinks about asking him directly, sometimes, but she’s not sure if she wants to hear the answer. It doesn’t matter anyway. That woman doesn’t exist anymore.

 

 

It takes her three days to find the key, hidden carefully underneath a lamp. She’d searched everywhere in the house, under floorboards, the drawers, the bed, as if she could find evidence of her past selves buried in a closet.

The numbers on the note lead to a safe deposit box in a city that’s a three-hour drive away. Inside, there are pictures of Tom, and a compilation of notes and records that link him Division. There are others, too—prominent political figures, government leaders, CEOs. One of them is Floriana Campo, and she remembers the case he had brought to the task force only the other day, of the Freelancer. There’s evidence here linking her to the Eberhardt cartel, a human trafficking organisation that targets psychic children in particular. So this is his real target, she thinks, before she remembers that these are her files. _Their_ target--but that doesn’t sound quite right, either. These videos, the files, all these notes scribbled in the margins by her--none of them are familiar.

A folder of a woman named Katarina Rostova catches her attention. It’s her biological mother—a former Division agent, and according to this report, a powerful watcher as well.

The last thing she finds is a tiny flash drive. There are patient records and Division files and videos—all of her. She’s a child in most of them, no older than four. But the most recent one is dated three years ago, and she has no recollection of any of it.

_Subject W2983 found and apprehended 06/12/2010… Female, age 30, second generation watcher… attempts to locate required memory unsuccessful… noncompliant and combative requiring multiple restraints… potential threat… neutralization and reintegration with monitor recommended before future attempts._

 

 

It’s past midnight by the time she drives back into town. She doesn’t go home.

Reddington opens his door for her without a word.

 

 

She’s curled up on his couch with a blanket wrapped around her. Reddington places a mug of hot cocoa on the table in front her, then takes a seat next to her. He had brushed off her apologies earlier for how late it was, but she can see the dark circles under his eyes, the tired lines of his face.

Liz had been angry at him, first, and blamed him for everything, because it is easier to blame him than the man she who was her husband, the man whom she loves. Loved. She doesn’t know if those feelings are real either. Only that she feels them, and only that she does not trust herself anymore.

“How did you find me?” she asks. “The first time.”

“I didn’t,” he says, and his mouth curves into a small smile. His gaze goes distant, lost in memory.There’s a certain sadness in the way that he looks at her. She hadn’t been able to pinpoint what it was before, but she knows now. “You found me first. I’d been searching for you for a long time… but you saw what was happening through your visions, and you tracked me through them.”

“I wonder what tipped me off.” Or how many times she’d gone through this, the betrayal and the hurt and the lies.

“You said that the first time you realised something was wrong was when you tried to contact Tom’s brother and found out that he didn’t exist. Then you started to watch him, waiting until Tom’s shadow slipped up.”

Her brow creases together. “But I can’t--”

“You’re stronger than you think, Lizzy.”

Maybe she was once. But she doesn’t feel strong now. "I've heard that wipers can cause brain damage if they're not careful. Do you think that's why?"

There's a pause as he considers it. "Perhaps," he says, voice low with anger. "A wiper might have more insight on the matter."

Her fingers tighten around the mug to the point of pain. "No. I don’t want anyone in my head,” she says, and something in his face flinches. “Never again."

Pushers can create memories that are indistinguishable from real ones. It would be easy, then, to mold a person into a collection of memories that loves you. How much of her is made of her own thoughts and feelings and memories? How much of her is left?

She startles when she feels him take the half-empty mug from her and set it aside on the table. He reaches out slowly to tuck her hair behind her ear, then cups her cheek when she does not move away. He waits until she meets his gaze, and then says, "When I first saw you again, you looked at me with such suspicion. It was the same look you'd given me when we first met. Even when you stabbed me with a pen—”

She flushes. “I—that was—”

He's grinning in a way she hasn't seen before. "That temper of yours, too, is how I knew. If you were only what Tom made you, then you wouldn't be here. Because despite everything, Lizzy, you're still you. You have such strength in you. He can never take that away."

She leans into his touch, closing her eyes. "I wish I could remember you."

The smile fades, that familiar sadness settling in its place. Despite what he says, she knows that he misses her, the one he knew before.

She yawns, and the moment breaks. "You should get some rest. Take the bed," he says.

“I can take the couch,” she says, and stands her ground for all of ten seconds before the tired look on his face wins out.

For a second, she considers asking him to share the bed with her. But then she thinks of her past, and the way he looks at her sometimes, and how it seemed natural for him to touch her cheek, and decides against it. It wouldn't be fair. Not when her husband still lingers in her mind, and not when she doesn't know how she feels.

 

 

“There are some things I don’t understand,” Liz says the next day, over breakfast. “I read all the files, and I watched the videos. I saw the folder of my mother, too… of Katarina.”

Despite the relaxed line of his shoulders, she can see the tension in his jaw, the guarded expression of his face. “What do you remember?”

“Barely any of it. I remember being surrounded by white walls—just white, everywhere. I remember the training exercises. They got mad when I couldn’t predict things,” she says, voice small. “Then there was an explosion, I think, and fire, everywhere. People were fighting. The movers were throwing things around. I don’t know what happened after that. The next thing I remember is living with Sam.”

Liz had forgotten what her mother looked like until she saw the picture of her. She doesn’t remember her biological father, either, or what their voices sounded like. All she knows, all Sam was willing to tell her, was that they had both died in that incident.

“You knew my parents,” she says, recalling what he had said to her during that first conversation.

“I did. They were both Division agents,” he says carefully. “You get your power from your mother. When she realised how much you took after her, she made the decision to get you out. But she knew you would never be safe as long as Division still stood.”

“The thing that you’re looking for—it’s related to this?”

He seems reluctant to tell her, and for a moment, she doesn’t think he will. Then he says, “It’s called the Fulcrum. It’s a blackmail file—proof of the Division’s existence—and it contains the only copy of some of their earliest experiments. Your mother took part in creating it, along with a group of other agents.”

“And that’s what happened that day—Division found out.”

“Yes. But your mother had seen the events of that day play out, so she hid the Fulcrum, and she made sure you were safe.” He falls silent, staring at the wall. The reluctance in his expression shifts slowly to something like resignation.

“I met this old woman, once, years before that,” he suddenly says, and she doesn’t understand the relevance of it at first. “It was on the street, and I’d accidentally bumped into her and knocked her groceries to the ground. I’d only picked up two oranges before she grabbed my wrist and said, ‘When the time comes, help the girl with the rabbit.’”

He still isn’t looking at her.“So I did. Even with the building burning down, you wouldn’t let go of it.”

Liz releases a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. She knows that stuffed toy.

“Are you why I can’t remember that day?” she asks very quietly.

“After the incident, you were…” he swallows thickly. “Sam and I—we did it to protect you.”

He does not say it defensively, just with a raw honesty that she does not know if she should trust. He doesn't expect her to forgive him, she realises, by the way he's looking at her, as if he expects her to walk away without a word. Neither does he seem to regret it.

Tom had erased her memories only to push new ones in her head, to make her forget all the lies, everything he'd done to her.

_We did it to protect you._

Liz tries to imagine it: a man walking out of the fire, holding the hand of a girl with a toy rabbit. She'd lost both her parents that day.

"I have very few people I can trust," she says. Then: "Promise me."

“Never again,” he vows, repeating her words from the night before. “I promise.”

 

 

When Floriana Campo dies, reports of her involvement in human trafficking begin to spread. There are more monsters like Floriana Campo in the world, both psychic and non-psychic, and Reddington has the list to prove it. _A multi-headed hydra,_ he had said, spreading a map of the world on the table with Division markers in nearly every continent.

She looks back at the map, realises what her past self must have seen. “It was never going to work, was it? The new identity, the starting over.”

“It would have worked, for some time,” Reddington says, “until they found you. Until they sent another Tom. Or until they captured you again. As long as Division still stands, they will never stop hunting you. There are only two options, Lizzy: run, or fight back.”

When she was younger, she had always dreamed of settling down, starting a family—a normal life. An end to the running. She’d had that, for a while, with Tom. But none of that was real in the end, either.

“What made you decide to stop running?”

Something in his face softens, and his gaze goes distant. “There was a woman,” he says, and she thinks, feeling irrationally jealous, _there’s always a woman._ “She showed me hope for a future I want to protect.”

 

 

**III.**

In between working the blacklister cases and examining their options regarding Tom, she practises her powers.

"Let's try something small," he says, and holds up a playing card in his hand. "Try to see what I'll shift it into."

She closes her eyes, focusing hard. Nothing.

"I don't think this is working," she grumbles, eyes still scrunched shut.

"You know, I once met someone who would always focus by pressing pressure points on her head to trigger her visions."

"Like this?"

“No, more like—” she feels his hands reposition hers, "perfect."

It takes her a few seconds before she realises that she has the index and middle finger of both hands pressed to her temples. Her eyes snap open, and he grins as she shoves his shoulder.

"I will have you know that Eloise is a very talented watcher," he says, and she rolls her eyes and focuses again.

"Ace of diamonds."

"No."

"King of hearts."

"Are you guessing? You're guessing."

 

 

After three hours of failed attempts and various meditation techniques, Liz gets up and start rummaging through his cupboards. 

“Lizzy—”

"Your method," she says tersely, "isn't working. You know what does work?" She pulls out a bottle of whisky triumphantly.

Reddington is on his feet immediately. "I don't think that's a good idea," he says, frowning. 

He reaches her in three strides, but she has a glass poured and downs it before he can do anything else. "This is the best idea I've had today," she says, raising her eyebrows. 

Reddington sighs and takes the bottle from her. "This will suppress your power more than amplify it, Lizzy."

"Not in the beginning," she says, and closes her eyes again. "See, just watch."

The moment Liz focuses on him, a familiar jolt of pain lances through her. The first thing she sees is herself, standing in the kitchen. She’s leaning toward him, eyes closed, face tilted slightly upward, his hand on her elbow as if to steady her. Her vision flashes forward, every possible decision branching out to yield a separate future: the one where she drops her glass and it shatters on the floor, the one where he turns the whisky bottle into a vase of flowers, the one where he steps back and walks away, the one where his gaze drops to her mouth and he leans forward to kiss her, and the one where he does nothing at all.

She snaps out of the vision, wide-eyed and unmoving. There’s no glass on the floor. The bottle is a bottle. He’s still standing in front of her, the heat of his palm a brand on her skin. 

Reddington tilts his head curiously. “What did you see?” he asks, close enough for her to feel the low rumble of his voice echo in her, through her.

She takes a step back, and his hand falls away but she can still feel the warmth of it moving up her back in a different time. “You were right. It didn’t work.” 

He doesn’t look like he believes her at all, but he doesn’t press further.

 

 

_You’re still you,_ he had said, but she wonders if he thinks of her as she does, the Lizzy who found him and the Lizzy he knows now. Whatever agreement they’d made in the past, whatever the Fulcrum means to him—he had cared for her, in some way. 

In another timeline, he had wanted to kiss her. Did kiss her.

She doesn’t know what to do about that.

 

 

The alcohol may not be a long-term solution, but it does give her an idea.

Watchers like her are particularly sensitive to drugs, more than any other type of psychic. Division had categorised her as a threat, but a watcher is too valuable to eliminate. They’d wanted to neutralise her instead.

She doesn’t take much medication, but she sends all of it to the lab, anyway.

 

 

Three days later, her powers come back in full force.

Reddington finds her in the motel room she's staying at, all the blinds drawn, curled in bed and shuddering in and out of vision after vision.

“Red,” she tries to say, but she's shaking so hard that her teeth chatter together. “He was—was drugging me,” is all she gets out before she's yanked into the future once more.

When she comes out of it, he's using a towel to wipe the sweat from her forehead, her neck, and he's saying something, but she can't quite make it out. There's a terrifying intensity to his face, and he holds her head in his hands to make her look at him.

"--did you take? When was the last time you took it?"

She tries to reach for the lab report on her bedside table. He's quick to catch on, and he skims it quickly before saying something to someone over his shoulder. Dembe, most likely, she thinks. Reddington wouldn't have come without him.

There was something she had to tell him, and she tugs on his sleeve to get his attention. But it's hard to think, hard to remember what it is when her entire body is turning against her, when her mind doesn't want to stay in one place.

Reddington turns back to her, taking her hand in his. "What is it, Lizzy?"

“He’s awake,” she hears herself say.

 

 

The extraction goes smoothly with a few well-placed illusions, body swaps, and forgeries.

Her only request had been not to kill him.

"He's a risk as long as he's alive," Reddington says, voice hard.

"I want to talk to him."

His jaw clenches. "That isn't a good idea, Lizzy."

“I need to know—” she breaks off as a wave of nausea hits her. She shoves it down, shuddering. “Please.”

His face is stone. But he relents, as she knew he would. “When you feel better,” he finally says, and she can’t argue with that.

 

 

It takes a week for the worst of her withdrawal to pass.

Liz still gets these tremors, sometimes, and the headache doesn’t fully go away. On her bad days she can’t sleep, and all she does is worry and pace around and say things that she doesn’t mean. She does recover some control over her visions, though, and she sees with a clarity that she hasn’t seen since—well. Since before. Reddington is good at keeping her in the present when she needs to be.

 

 

Liz watches Tom comes to consciousness slowly, the sedative still lingering in his system. She tries to recall what it felt like to love him, but all she can think of is the years he took from her. When he tries to move and finds himself restrained and gagged, the panic seems to clear his mind. Then he sees her across the room and his struggling comes to a stop.

“If you try to push me,” she says softly, “Dembe will break your spine the second you speak. Do you understand?”

He looks at her impassively. Liz looks over at Dembe and nods for him to remove the gag.

“How many times did you have my memory erased?”

No answer.

“Who do you report to?”

No answer.

Her throat feels tight, and she’s painfully aware of her voice shaking in every syllable.

“How many times did you push me? When did it start?”

No answer.

For a second, she wishes she were a mover. She wishes she could break every bone in his body.

Liz turns to walk away before she does something she knows she’ll regret, but just when she reaches the door of the warehouse, he says, “A month after we got married.”

She stops.

“That’s when it started.”

“You’re lying.”

“I didn’t have to push you to fall in love with me,” he says, looking at her with pity. “You did that all on your own.”

Dembe shoves the gag back in Tom’s mouth, so unexpectedly that she’s almost startled out of her anger. He looks at her and nods.

She doesn’t trust herself to speak, so she mouths _thank you_ at him before she leaves.

 

 

Reddington doesn’t say a word when she returns. She’d asked him not to be there with her, when she went to see Tom. His disapproval had been clear, but he’d let her go with Dembe.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. “I thought—I thought I would feel better. When I saw him, everything just came back. And I don’t—” her voice breaks, “I don’t know if I’m myself, sometimes.”

He looks at her for a long moment. Then he comes toward her, placing his hand on her cheek, always with the small touches, so gentle and hesitant. “You’re still you,” he says, and there is no uncertainty in his voice. “You are,” he repeats, and gathers her into his arms, murmuring quietly into her ear.

 

 

She’s begun to notice that he’s a tactile man. He likes picking things up, taking them apart with his hands, examining them close to his eye to find out how they work. Over the past few weeks, his touch had become familiar, too—his hand a gentle guide at her elbow, the warmth of his palm on her lower back, this thumb rubbing circles at her upper arm.

Liz thinks nothing of it at first. It is casual, comforting, familiar—until it isn’t. Until she finds her eyes drawn to his mouth, his callused hands, wondering what they would feel like against her skin.

When she starts tensing at his touch, too aware of his proximity, she tries to play it off with a smile at first, distracting him with conversation of the work at hand. But of course he notices, and he gives her the space he thinks that she wants.

Then he apologises for making her uncomfortable and crossing boundaries, and he has the wrong idea and it isn’t what she wants at all, but she doesn’t know how to explain it in a way that doesn’t want to make her die of embarrassment, except maybe—

In the moment she makes the decision, the vision hits. It’s shorter than her other ones, but it’s no less clear. Reddington says her name worriedly, and she can imagine what she must look like in the aftermath: eyes wide, cheeks flushed, breathing uneven. His concern is etched on his face, and she can see his restraint in the tense line of his shoulder. He used to steady her, after her visions. Let her use him as an anchor. Now, his absence is palpable.

“What did you see, Lizzy?”

It is the same thing he’d asked her the last time, and she smiles.

“This,” she says, and presses her mouth to his.

 

 

The next morning, she has that vision of him again, of him dying, but it’s different with her newfound clarity. She knows that backdrop, that empty street. She knows those walls. It’s the warehouse where Tom is. No matter the path, the outcome is the same: he gets shot in the chest, whether it is by her hand or not.

When Reddington starts throws on his jacket and grabs his gun, the dread in her chest rises to a peak. “That was Baz,” he says, face grave, “there’s a situation with Tom.”

“Do you have to go yourself?” She tries to say it casually, but by the way he pauses and looks at her, she isn’t successful.

“Tell me how it happens.”

 

 

Most of the guards are dead or dying when they arrive.

Liz recognises one of them—the commander of the group, a bleeder named Baz. He's soaked in blood, unconscious, and breathing shallowly, but he's still alive.

"I'll stay with him," Liz says. "Go check inside."

Reddington hesitates. "Shout if you hear anything," he says, quickly surveying their surroundings before he goes inside with Dembe.

Liz does the best she can to stop the bleeding, but her hands and a bundled sweater can only do so much. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

Reddington was right, she thinks. She should have let him end it. She should have grabbed her gun and ended herself.

Baz stirs, and his eyes open. He jerks away when he sees her, eyes wide and panicked, and she doesn't realise that it isn't her that he's reacting to until it's too late.

“Silence,” Tom says from behind her. She whirls around, reaching for her gun—“You don't want to hurt me."

 _Not again. Not again._ She's there, the gun's at his head, and she thinks of every single thing he's done to her, of the years he's taken from her, of the dead lying around her, but she can't do it, she can't hurt him, can't say anything at all.

"Oh, Liz," he sighs, "don't cry," and she stops, just like that. "It's nothing personal. I'm just doing my job. Division still wants you, even after all of this."

He takes her by the arm and drags her to one of the guard's vehicles. Just as they reach it, she hears a banging, metallic sound—Baz, hitting his gun against the wall.

Reddington comes running out moments later with Dembe quick on his heels, and Tom is quick to points his gun at her head. They're too far away for Tom to reach them—but Liz isn't.

 

 

It happens quickly:

She raises her gun and points it at Reddington. Dembe lifts his hand, but stops at Reddington's shout. There’s a look of quiet acceptance on his face, different from the raw panic she saw in her visions. His mouth is moving but she doesn't know what he's saying. She can't cry. She can't say anything at all.

"Shoot him," Tom says, and she does.

 

 

Reddington crumples to the ground and she sees the past and the present all at once, a different man falling, a different gun in her hands.

She doesn't know which breaks Tom's hold on her, but she screams, and it's enough to distract Tom for the second Dembe needs to slam him into the car. Tom collapses, and she sprints toward Reddington, but Dembe immediately steps in front of him.

"I do not want to hurt you, Elizabeth," he says, voice shaking. Behind him, she sees Baz limping slowly in their direction.

"It's me, Dembe, please, it's me!"

Reddington gasps for breath on the ground, red blooming where she shot him. _I did this. I did this. I did this._

Dembe's hand wavers from its outstretched position toward her, and she closes the distance between her and Reddington, dropping beside him and placing her hands over the wound, her entire weight on it.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," she says, voice wrecked, and his hands cover hers weakly.

"We need to get him and Baz to Kate," Dembe says.

He lifts Reddington into the air and they move as fast as they can to the nearest car. It's the one Tom was planning on taking, and she grabs the keys from his pockets and tosses it to Dembe.

“There’s a safe house nearby, they’re waiting for us,” she tells him, and he nods without questioning it.

"Tom," Reddington rasps faintly as Dembe lowers him carefully into the backseat.

"We can't leave him alive," Dembe says, and offers her his gun.

She takes it.

 

 

Kate turns out to be a stitcher who introduces herself later as Mr. Kaplan.

Reddington's unconscious by the time they get to the safe house, but once Mr. Kaplan lays her hands on his chest, the wound begins to heal. Liz watches as the bones of his ribs seem to realign and reform, muscle and sinew stitching back together, spitting out the bullet she'd shot into his chest. His breathing evens out. His pulse grows stronger.

"He'll be all right, dearie," Mr. Kaplan says, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Just give him some time to recover. You need to rest, too."

Liz doesn't take her eyes off of him, counting each rise and fall of his chest. "I'm not leaving him."

Mr. Kaplan nods in understanding. "Let me know if anything changes. I'll check on the others."

 

 

Luli arrives later to check in on them. “I’m going to shadow the building,” she warns Liz, so she isn’t alarmed when she can’t see them in her visions anymore. That Luli had the ability to hide the entire building would have impressed her, if it were any other time. Now, Liz can only think of that moment.

“Dembe told me what happened,” Luli says, staring at Reddington from the doorway, and the guilt twists in Liz’s stomach. “I should’ve been there.”

“Nothing would’ve changed.”

“Still.”

When Luli doesn’t leave, Liz looks over her shoulder at her, bracing herself for the anger, the hostility. They aren’t on unfriendly terms, but Liz can count the number of times they’ve spoken on one hand. But instead, Luli’s frowning, brows creased together in what might almost be concern. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Alright. Come on.” Luli waves her over.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Dembe’s here, Kate’s here, I’m here, and Baz can scream if he needs to. Raymond will be fine.” When Liz doesn’t move, Luli sighs and says, “You’re covered in dirt and blood. You look disgusting. You’ll probably end up giving him some sort of infection.”

Liz glares at her, but grudgingly goes to wash up.

 

 

Liz does leave, once, to retrieve the Fulcrum.

Luli comes with her as her shadow after someone takes over at the safe house.

The toy rabbit is still where she left it.

 

 

Reddington is awake when she returns.

Liz hears his laughter first, and she thinks it is the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard. Then she turns the corner and sees him sitting up in his bed, healthy, awake, whole. The conversation fades, and Dembe quietly leaves, giving them privacy.

Reddington’s still smiling, but it’s softer, now, when he looks at her. “Hello, Lizzy. I'm glad to see you're okay."

She doesn't move from the threshold. "I am... so, so sorry for what I did."

"Lizzy—”

"I almost killed you. I... I knew it would happen. I saw it happen."

He sighs. "Lizzy, don't make an invalid get up."

She knows, objectively, that he's fine, but she goes toward him anyway and sits at the edge of his bed.

"I know it wasn't you. This was on him, Lizzy. Not you." She opens her mouth to argue, but he continues: “If you hadn’t warned me, we wouldn’t have been able to prepare and I may not have made it. I know that there are a hundred different ways this could have happened and things we could’ve done differently. But right now, in this time, I am alive. You are alive. That's all that matters."

Liz takes a shaky breath and nods. He pulls her into a hug, stroking her back and pressing a kiss to the top of her head, saying _I’m okay, I’m okay, it wasn’t you,_ over and over until she believes it.

 

 

"Do you remember when I asked you why you stopped running?"

She rolls over so she's lying on her stomach, chin propped on her hand. His hand settles on the curve of her hip, his thumb drawing lazy circles on her skin.

"You said that a woman showed you a future that you wanted to protect."

He says, "You're adorable when you're jealous, Lizzy," and she narrows her eyes at him.

"What was it?"

"It was you. Your hair's grown longer. You're walking in the park in spring, and you're smiling." At the startled look on her face, he asks, "Have you seen it yet?"

Liz smiles to herself. "A version of it." She grows thoughtful. "Did you know that things would turn out this way?"

"No. I never thought--"

"What?"

"I never thought that you would fall in love with me again."

 

 

It's only a matter of time before Division sends more agents after them.

But they have the Fulcrum, and they have her, and Liz will guide them through the coming war into the future.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Push (2009)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_\(2009_film\))
> 
> **Watcher** : clairvoyant, sees the future at will  
>  **Mover** : telekinetic  
>  **Pusher** : manipulates people via implanted thoughts, memories, and emotions  
>  **Shadow** : can block sniffs (psychometric trackers), some can block watchers  
>  **Wiper** : can temporarily or permanently erase/block a memory  
>  **Stitcher** : healers, can also un-heal what they've done


End file.
